¡§The Most Important Day In the Most Important Life Ever Lived!¡¨
¡§The Weight of the World¡¨
Matthew 26:36-46; Luke 22:43-44
February 3, 2002
Series Intro:
I haven¡¦t watched the show, but I¡¦ve seen the promos and I have inside sources who tell me what it is about; the show is called Twenty-Four, and the premise is that the show is done in real time; that is, a one-hour show encapsulates a 24-hour time period. There will be 24 episodes to the show¡¦s season, apparently, and thus one year of this show, not counting re-runs, will involve one day in the life of its characters. Again, I have not seen the show, so I know little of it; it might well be entertaining; on the other hand, I wonder what they¡¦d do for a final show if the ratings stunk and they decided to cancel it. Perhaps they¡¦d write an ending of the show which would involve the world blowing up between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m.! I¡¦ve also wondered if, say, the 3:00-4:00 a.m. episode was really worth watching; what, did the cameras focus for an hour on some guy snoring in his bed, or what? Oh, but it¡¦s Hollywood, and any correspondence to actual reality is purely coincidental!
The fictional goings on of some TV drama matter little in the grand scheme of things; our series which we begin today I have likewise entitled ¡§Twenty Four¡¨, but in so doing I propose to take a look at the most important day in the most important life ever lived. It might be said that particular people seem to be created for particular times. Would there have been a Protestant Reformation had there been no Martin Luther? Would there be a United States today had there been no Patrick Henry, no George Washington or Ben Franklin? Would Europe have fallen to the Nazis had there been no Sir Winston Churchill? Would we still be using candles if Thomas Alva Edison had never come on the scene? Would we stress over vanished documents and lost email were there no Bill Gates? Good questions all, I think!
But we can say with the utmost of certainty that Jesus Christ came on this world¡¦s scene with one primary mission, the redemption of lost mankind. This was, from eternity past, His one chief purpose, His one driving desire, His ultimate mission. If this was the case¡Xand it was¡Xthen we can say with equal certainty that the 24 hours we will study over the next few weeks represent the most important day in the most important life ever lived. We journey alongside Jesus to Calvary, that place where He paid the ultimate price to purchase our redemption.
Would you stand with me as we read today¡¦s Scripture, Matthew 26:36-46? PRAYER
It had already begun as quite the evening; in an upper room, Jesus had led His disciples to eat the Passover meal. He had given them teaching that they could not possibly have fully comprehended, but He knew that eventually they¡¦d get the idea, teaching about the cup of wine He held out to them representing His blood, and the bread He broke with them representing His body. He had talked about His impending betrayal, even identifying the one who would do so, but undoubtedly they had difficulty really processing this as well. After singing a hymn of praise and leaving, He had predicted that all His followers would leave His side in cowardice. Brash Peter, known far and wide for engaging his mouth while his brain languished yet in neutral, boldly proclaimed his fidelity, literally moments prior to his gutless retreat. Now, it was time for a retreat!
I¡¦ve begun to make it my yearly habit to get away for several days, near the beginning of the year, to recharge my own batteries and prepare for ministry to come. This year, I chose to do so at a retreat center just outside of Asheville, NC, which is one of my favorite towns in America. It¡¦s good to get away from the routine for a time to re-center oneself on the real priorities of life and ministry.
Jesus had such a getaway spot. It was a place of retreat and refreshment, sustaining Him in times of physical, mental, emotional exhaustion. Its name: Gethsemane, the ¡§place of the olive press¡¨, a garden of gnarled olive trees. This final trip, however, was not one of comfort or relaxation; rather, it would portend the most excruciating suffering ever known by man. And so as we begin our walk with Jesus to Calvary, we go to a garden. It was in a garden, interestingly, that Adam¡¦s sin ruined us; the taint from his disobedience stains every human life. But now it is in a garden again where the 2nd Adam began His work of restoration.
Jesus left the majority of his disciples, taking only the ¡§inner three¡¨ with Him. Now see Him as a profound change begins to sweep over His soul. Overwhelmed with grief, ¡§to the point of death, He says, driven to the verge of distraction by distress. Earlier, He had led in a hymn, likely a Psalm; now, according to the parallel account in Luke 22, Christ is described as being in agony, sweating great drops of blood. Imagine the horrible physical stress He was under which produced such a reaction; see Him there, in intense dread, the horror of the hours to come beginning to register with their full force in His mind and on His heart. He asks the disciples to wait for Him, keeping watch. Though the hour was getting late, it was customary on the night of the Passover celebration to keep late hours, to talk at length of the wonder of God¡¦s redemption of His people from Egyptian bondage. The disciples had no doubt done this many times; it was certainly a reasonable request.
Jesus then went ahead alone; it was His first real taste of the aloneness that would envelope His soul over the course of the next hours. No one could comprehend what He would experience; the disciples were, for all of Jesus¡¦ teaching, oblivious to the impending events. In the hour of the Master¡¦s deepest agony, they snored.
It is in verse 39 that we hear the first of His repeated prayers, the humble, intimate, persevering, gut-wrenching cries of the Son of God to His Father. He had known from eternity past that it would all come down to this space and time event, this moment of truth when the full fury of hell would be unleashed upon Him. In one sense, then, Jesus couldn¡¦t have possibly been more prepared; as omniscient God, He knew what lay ahead. And yet, in terror Jesus trembled at the prospect!
Listen to His prayer: ¡§My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.¡¨ ¡§Let this cup pass from Me.¡¨ To what ¡§cup¡¨ did He refer? What was in that cup? First, let¡¦s think about what the cup did not mean. Jesus was not referring to the physical suffering which He would endure, the pain, the physical agony. All through Scripture, one of the things we admire about the Master is His courage; how could He ask His disciples to follow at all costs, knowing what that would entail for most of them, were He not willing to endure suffering? No, the cup to which He referred was not the physical pain.
What was in that ¡§cup¡¨?
I. The identification of the sinless Christ with mankind¡¦s sin. II Corinthians 5:21
We cannot begin to fathom what this must have meant to the holy Christ. We are born in sin; it is part of our very nature, inherited from our parents, innate to us. We see all around us the devastation wrought by the lie that man is basically good; humanism¡¦s utopian dreams lie shattered in the face of this stark reality about man¡Xwe are born in sin! We simply cannot understand the agony that must have filled the heart and mind of Christ as He contemplated the truth of what we read in II Corinthians 5:21, which tells us that Christ ¡§was made to be sin for us, He Who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.¡¨ In Jesus, two disparate forces, each the antithesis of the other, collided in a shock wave that rocked eternity. Jesus, God incarnate, perfect and holy, was to be seen by His Father as the very distillation of all of the ugly sin of all mankind. Jesus was about to experience what it meant to be looked upon by His Father as the very embodiment of sin. The weight of the world and its sin fell upon Him in all of its ugliness and blackness and horrifying shame. And we can understand at least a little of why He would cry out, effectively, ¡§Father, if there is any way in which you can accomplish the work of redemption apart from my experiencing this terror, please!¡¨
II. The abandonment of the suffering Christ by His Father. Matthew 27:46
We each have experienced abandonment on one level or another; either a friend who turned her back on you, or a parent who left home, or some other feeling of being left high and dry. It is one of the worst feelings we can face¡Xand might I add that there are millions of people right here on our shores who feel this¡Xthe sense of being all alone. Jesus knew this, more keenly than we ever could; hear it in His cry in Matthew 27:46. The withdrawal of God¡¦s support and presence made the agony of bearing the sin of the world that much more difficult. Perhaps that cup of the sin of mankind might not have been quite so horrible had God the Father somehow shared in it with Jesus, but this is not to be the case. Alone and forsaken of His Father, Jesus would bear the suffering alone.
III. The untempered wrath of a holy God being poured out upon Christ. I John 4:10
In the Old Testament, the word ¡§cup¡¨ was used to refer to the judgment and wrath of God. As Jesus hung on the cross, the Lord of the universe poured out upon Him the fury of His righteous wrath; Jesus, according to Wayne Grudem, ¡§became the object of the intense hatred of sin and vengeance against sin which God had patiently stored p since the beginning of the world.¡¨ The word is ¡§propitiation¡¨; it occurs in I John 4:10. Grudem, again, defines propitiation as ¡§a sacrifice that bears God¡¦s wrath to the end and in so doing changes God¡¦s wrath toward us into favor.¡¨ Please understand this: God¡¦s grace, about which we speak much and ought to speak more, absolutely does not mean that God lets sin slide! He doesn¡¦t say, ¡§well, kids will be kids, your sin isn¡¦t that bad, come on into Heaven!¡¨ A holy God could not do that! Instead, He punishes sin severely, unleashing the full force of His wrath against it, embodied as it was in Jesus. Just a glimpse of the awfulness of this in the garden brought Jesus¡¦ sweat out in the form of blood!
In that cup which Jesus drank willingly, but not without profound agony of soul, was the pain of bearing our sin, the pain of abandonment, the pain of facing the terrible wrath of God. And understandably He prayed, ¡§God, if there is any other way¡K!¡¨
What are the lessons of Gethsemane?
I. The awfulness of the wrath of God
John 3:36 tells us that ¡§he who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.¡¨ They used to call it ¡§hellfire and brimstone preaching¡¨, and we don¡¦t hear much of it anymore. I want to tell you that the wrath of God is so great that Jesus, who knew its horror, recoiled in terror at the very thought of it, but the Bible says that that wrath is reserved for all of those who never bow the knee and accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. That wrath was not designed for you; it was designed for Satan and his legions, but that wrath is what some people in this place will experience for eternity, not because some preacher so decreed it, but because a holy God demands payment for sin. Jesus made that payment; will you accept what He has done for you? Because as ugly as this truth is, the wrath of God is all that awaits for eternity for those without Jesus.
Harold Hughes was a rough-hewn, profane politician when he met Jesus as his Savior in the early 1970¡¦s. Soon thereafter, a reporter was interviewing Hughes about his conversion experience, and this skeptical reporter no doubt relishing the thought of making Hughes look like some rube for having experienced this ¡§born again¡¨ thing. ¡§What is the basic difference between being born again, as you now claim to be, and the person you were before?¡¨ Hughes thought for a moment, and then he said, ¡§well, the difference is that for the Christian, this earth is the only hell he will experience. For the unbeliever, this earth is the only heaven he will experience.¡¨
The wrath of God will be the experience of all unregenerate mankind.
II. The awfulness of our sin
Every time you are tempted to treat sin casually, to slough it off, to compare yourself to others as though it is to others you ought to be compared, you think of the cross. Jesus didn¡¦t pay a little fine and court costs to win your freedom; He went through an agony beyond compare because of what sin does to us. When you think of the price Jesus paid, remember that it was your sin and mine that put Him there. The wages of sin is not a bad mood, a slap on the wrist, or an hour or three in purgatory; it is death, and Jesus¡¦ cross tells the whole story about how wretched our sin really is in the eyes of a holy God, the only eyes that matter!
III. The awfulness of complacency
Maybe we too, like the disciples, would have fallen asleep in the garden, not comprehending the truth of what was taking place. But now we know the agony Jesus was going through¡Xhow can we meander through complacent Christian lives? I will be sharing more in weeks and months to come about this, but I will tell you this much: I am convinced like never before that the time of playing church and playing Christian in America is rapidly drawing to a close. Some have rejoiced at all the attention given to God in the wake of 9/11, but I will tell you that when you look just a little bit below the surface, the truth is that we might sing ¡§God Bless America¡¨, but we clearly have little intention of bowing the knee to Jesus. Quite the opposite: the forces that are rallying now are increasingly asking Christians to put aside their particular theological distinctives for the sake of national unity, or increased understanding, or some kind of faux peace. I am convinced that the aftermath of 9/11 is much more likely to have a net negative impact upon our freedom to proclaim Jesus in this society. During this summer, I will be preaching through the book of James, and I¡¦ll tell you this: this upcoming series might well have the effect of ¡§separating the men from the boys¡¨ when it comes to the seriousness of our walks with God! We no longer have time for damned complacency, and no, I did not curse just now; rather, I used a very Biblically appropriate adjective, because complacency belongs in hell, not in the lives of Christians!
IV. The awesomeness of the love of God
We¡¦ll be exploring this in greater detail in messages to come, but the only conclusion you can draw from a God Who would willingly come and bear the excruciating agony of a cruel cross is that He must be motivated by a powerful love, and He is! I close by quoting the verse we referred to earlier, I John 4:10: ¡§In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.¡¨ Amazing love, how can it be, that Thou, my God, shouldest die for me!
¡§What do I do with a message like this?¡¨
1. If you struggle with guilt, contemplate what might be causing that guilt:
„h Have you ever received the forgiveness of God from your sin, on the basis of His grace through your faith in Christ?
„h If so, is there sin in your life currently which you have been unwilling to repent of and forsake?
„h If you have trusted Christ and confessed your sin to Him, it is very possible that remaining guilt in your life is a result of not believing what God¡¦s Word says about the matter. Read I John 1:9; Psalm 103:10-14; Romans 8:1,34; & Psalm 32:5. Pray that God would show you His truth.
2. If your walk with Christ has grown stagnant, ask God to give you a fresh realization of the sacrifice Christ made for you.
3. Since God¡¦s love is amazing, share it with a friend this week!
